poem
WRITTEN:
1984, 17 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Due to assorted pressures, including peer and parental, I invented a boyfriend for myself for the mid-through-later period of high school. This enabled much of my normal behaviour to be acceptably explained away (by others, of course), instead of having yet more annoying labels adhered to me without my consent. This poem is about an argument that the boyfriend and I supposedly had after I'd spilled something on myself and got upset about spoiling a favourite shirt.
The first two lines are in fact the key to the truth, not that anyone ever figured that out.
She has a name, but she does not give it.
She has a title so she gives that instead.
Lateness prevails.
This is a state of normality and causes only minor alarm
and then only in itself.
Aware of her disposition, he exercises caution.
This she is aware of, and
this she is both grateful for and disillusioned by.
And all he can say is On you it looks good,
and wonders why
she turns away to cry.